Pose-to-Authentic

Hello, this is Will Hardy with Man Talk Radio. We are all about breaking down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few minutes. Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Network Podcast.

This is the Truth Network. It's a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now. Welcome to the masculine journey radio show. So this is Andy Thomas coming at you. And that was my first pose.

That was my attempt to be Sam Main. And you'll understand why we're talking about pose right here in a bit. But you know, we're getting ready for the boot camp, April 29 to May the second. And in doing so we're trying to prep you with some of the content we'll be talking at the talks that we'll be giving while we're there. And we happen to follow Mr. Graham's topic of the boot camp and we'll let him open up and share a little bit about what's on his heart to share. And posing is something we are all very familiar with, or we have no self-awareness whatsoever.

It could be either one for you guys out there. But sadly, our alpha dogs, who are probably our best posers, Sam and Robby are out tonight. So you're stuck with the... They're not here to argue with us.

They're very absent. So we can pick all them all we want. And we don't have Sam to ask tough questions without any warning whatsoever.

No, you just wait. We love Andy for not doing that. But tonight we're talking about posing. And there's a lot of different words for that. One that you find in the Bible is hypocrisy. And that is posing, one you'll find in the... And how's that in Hebrew, Jim?

Hypocrisy? Actually, that's usually in Greek. And I can't say it in Greek either because Greek was my lousy language.

Greek to me. Wearing a mask is the meaning of hypocrisy. And that's kind of the way you'll usually hear it from the psychological babble is wearing a mask. And it's basically not being authentic. It's not being who we really are.

It's not having integrity, which is being all together. I know we really hate to go to the Bible with this, but we're going to do that and start out tonight with the Bible verse. We'll forgive you.

Of course, we could start with a funny clip and then go to the Bible. Why don't we do that? All right. Break it up a little. Okay. Well, it's on you, I think.

Or who's setting it up? I thought I said you were doing it. All right.

Sorry. We're posing again. So go ahead, Rodney. When you think about Pose, this movie just jumps out so much because it's so popular and so funny, but it's Mr. Mom. And so everybody of the generation, at least that's sitting around this table, knows it very well. The younger generation, I just asked my son, he popped in for the day the other day, and he's never seen Mr. Mom because I was cutting this clip out for you, Jim, at the last minute, and it was like, oh, no, you've never seen Mr. Mom?

It's a great show. So what we have here is a dad who was a working dad. He had a stay-at-home wife taking care of the kids, and the roles are reversed. He gets fired. His wife's going to work. This is her getting picked up the very first day going to her work, and the boss comes to the door in the limo, and then he walks up to the door, knocks on the door. And then you got Jack, who's the dad, doing the big pose of he's a real manly man in this pose of, yeah, I'm doing all this stuff.

And you guys get to pick out some of the pose in there that's coming out, and we'll point out maybe a little bit afterwards that you might not get. Well, hello down there. Why don't you run and tell your mommy that Mr. Richardson is here?

Stay right here. I'm not supposed to let strangers in the house. How you doing? You must be Ronald Richardson. I'm Jack Butler. Nice to meet you. Pleased to meet you. I say I'm pleased to meet you. I'm just waiting for Carolyn. Well, Ron, you know women. Yeah, I like to think I do. Want a beer? Seven o'clock in the morning.

Scotch? Not drone working hours. Oh, I'm sorry, pal.

No problem. Come on over here, Ron. Let me show you what I'm doing, taking advantage of some of the time I have to add a whole new wing on here. I'm going to rip these walls out and, of course, rewire it. You're going to make it all 220?

Yeah, 220, 221, whatever it takes. Well, you sound like a pretty handy guy. Yeah, well, I like to do a little bit of everything, Ron.

I write poetry, I paint, sculpt. Oh. Oh, Carol. Don't you look nice. Thanks. I'm sorry if I kept you waiting.

Oh, not at all. I was just having a little chat here with hubby. Jack. Jack.

Yeah, he's quite a guy. So, I guess we better get going. Okay. Jack, a real pleasure. Ron. Very nice outfit, honey.

Thank you. Honey, if you call them out here, I'll be at the gym or at the game club. How'd you like a little trim on that mustache, Ron? Yeah, there's a man right there who's thinking he's losing everything, he's got to be somebody he's not, and just goes way overboard and makes it obvious. That's one way to pose.

You guys were just talking earlier about some others, too. We have many ways of posing, and we often look at things, and we do it without even thinking about it, and didn't want to offer that up for the guys. And we're going to see him a little bit talking to his son and coming around, but Mr.

Mom. Where he becomes a little bit more authentic, yes. Yeah, well, like I was telling you in the pre-show, when are we not posing? We pose at work.

Andy and I are in IT, and we're the king of Google, I'm sure. You always can drop a 220, 221 on whatever works. It doesn't matter. The IT industry is full of three-letter acronyms.

Just pick one. That's right. Lots to hide behind there. That's right. But all poses get exposed eventually, right?

Some of them are blatantly, obviously, 220, 221. Anybody knows anything about electricity that's... Yeah. But that's basically wiring your entire house for a dryer outlet. Right. So let's just go ahead and go down that road. But, you know, and the same happens, especially if you know anything about what's going on in the topic of discussion. You can quickly pick out the posers. And so, you know, we're all hiding from something. We're all fearing something.

And I notice, you know, often men, when they first meet each other, the first thing they do is, what do you do for a living? And there's a difference. There's a big difference if, you know... How important are you? Right. Well, and we're busy placing ourselves in the proverbial pecking order, right? That's right.

You know, there's a big difference between, you know, brain surgeon and sanitary person. That's right. Exactly. So, Jim, you want to share something? I do, and that's a pretty good lead-in to Jesus talking about hypocrisy to the fellows that are following him around. He is talking to them directly. He says, be on guard and guard yourselves against the hamets of the Pharisees. That's the leaven, the sin of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. He basically says, the sin is hypocrisy to them, starting verse 2.

Oh, and this is Luke 12. Verse 2, there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and nothing hidden that will not be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in private rooms will be proclaimed from the housetops. How many of us think about that when we're talking in our daily lives? How many little lies do we tell? When I was growing up, I would tell you whatever I thought would come across best and make me look best.

That's posing. And I was a master at being able to say something that was factually accurate but would steer you somewhere else entirely that was a better place to go. They call those white lies, right? Well, I didn't even call them lies then. That's all I told you. Stretching the truth. But I won't say I told you the truth anymore because if it's not the whole truth, then it's not truth.

Sure. But who else has a posing incident? And we're all looking at Danny.

He's a pastor too. We're professional posers. I was thinking along the lines as I listened to the clips this morning that coming out of addictions and stuff like that was super posing, so to speak. But we used to call it the chameleon effect. And, Jim, you mentioned it, trying to fit in because I think that's one of your desires or your heart is to fit in and be accepted.

And the easy way it seems to do that is to pose because I don't want to present something you may or may not like. And so, yeah, I did that most of my life, maybe not as bad now but trying not to be. So how much time we got? No, we're good. We're good.

No need to rush. But, yeah, I think, you know, when you think about where did all this start? Well, Randy, it all started at the fall.

I mean, you think about it, you know. Adam chose Eve over God. And they discovered they were naked after they ate the fruit from the tree. And what's the first thing they do? They hide. I love that part of the Bible because God comes into the garden and he goes, Adam, where are you? Like he does not know.

This is the creator of the universe. And Adam's response is very revealing. I was afraid and therefore I hid. And we're all still hiding today. You know, we're hiding at work. We're hiding from our wives. Heck, we hide from our kids half the time. And, you know, I knew things were like when, you know, I was a kid.

We walked uphill both ways in the blowing snow, right? You know, it's when we get called out that tends to be the fear, real fear that we face. And we tend to avoid those kinds of situations. And as Jim was talking earlier, you know, a post can be an opposite hide, right?

You know, literally hiding, sitting back in the corner. You know, one of my favorite pastimes is to sit like a fly on a wall in an IT meeting and watch these guys and just sit there and giggle at whoever is trying to up somebody else to impress their boss mostly. Yeah, definitely. I think that's what we do. We take those opportunities to put on our best face and hopefully everybody falls in love with that face. So we'll be talking to you on the other side of the break. Jim's got a nice bump for us.

We hope. Go to masculinejourney.org. Go to masculinejourney.org and register today.

Turnersville, North Carolina, 27285. Okay, I got it. You're pretending that you're Robby, right? Well, first of all, I don't know if anybody caught it. I said, I hope. We have a bump afterwards. A shout out to Keith, who's our wonderful guy that does everything. And we gave him that about 20 minutes ago.

Oh, could you get this? And he did. But I love that song. And when we did this topic, it hit me while we were sitting around talking about it.

And that is just a song that says it all. I'm a great pretender. Faking it. I want you to think I'm doing well. And that's one of the things that we do in church.

Right, and I was just thinking that. All too often, you know, you go to church and you talk to your friends. And how you doing? I'm doing great. I'm blessed.

I'm blessed, you know. And there's always the canned answers. When, you know, you may have just gotten done being in a drag out fight on the way to church with your wife and kids just getting there. And you get out and everybody sticks on their happy little faces and smile. And, you know, you let down your guard at church. And, you know, now everybody's like, oh, I know where you're at.

I've been where you are. And, you know, when most of the time you know who is authentic in the area. And that's the funny part about posing. Is everybody knows you're being fake.

Nobody's buying the pose. And they're doing a lot of it themselves. And, you know, it's a shame that that's some of our culture. I wouldn't say every place, every church is like that. But I think there is a tendency to do that.

Everybody wants to put the best foot forward. And sometimes people say, oh, fake it until you make it and stuff like that. Which is true.

But you never find growth or healing if you stay in that place where everything is good and all. You're lying to yourself. And you're lying to the other people. And they know you're lying just like Jim said. And it's like there's really no victory in that.

There's no truth. And really what we're trying to get back is quit living out of the false self. Living out of the true self.

And that true self looks a lot more like Adam before the fall than it does, you know, on this other side. One of the reasons that I wanted to take this quickly from the pose to integrity is that's my word for the year. And I have never had so much trouble with one of my own words. Because I catch myself all the time. I've got a new canned response when somebody asks how I'm doing. Half the time I forget it.

And half the time when I don't forget it, I have to actually think about it and make it so before I say it. But it's I'm content. Which is what Paul calls us to do.

But apparently. Yeah, I've heard this out of Rodney about this place of contentment. Well, we would all like to be there. And this past year in COVID world was actually one of my most contented years I've ever had.

The last two boot camps. That was kind of one of my major themes that I had was just the knowledge of God and knowing that I'm his beloved son. I mean, what more could you do? The more you learn and the more you grapple with who you really are in Christ, it just makes everything so much better. So for me, that's where I've really been even though the world's going nuts. I've been pretty content. And I have. And it's really funny the responses I get. And again, I sometimes pause until I make certain that I am content.

But I get diametrically opposed responses. I've had people, oh, I'm so sorry, what's wrong? When I said I was content. Like, this is awful. And then I've had people, oh, that's wonderful.

That's a great place to be. But it rarely gets a, okay. Well, like the content would be, oh, you're content. You're not really desiring anything more. You're settling.

I'm sorry. Exactly. Exactly.

Instead of saying, being like, you're settling, you say, no, I'm settled. Which is another good place to be. So we got another clip coming up. And it's actually where Jack.

Throw it back over there to Rodney. Jack gets things straight. And to the guy's point, we're talking about moving from the pose or poser to integrity and authenticity. And those are important places to be because I think a lot of us, we walk around here with this false self.

And whenever you feel like you're walking around as who you were meant to be and not having to wear a face mask or trying to get people to fall in love with somebody that you're really not, there is a lot of freedom that comes in that. And this one does get to the root of our dependence on the pose. Right. So go ahead and set it up, Rodney. Yeah. So you had Jack before where he was in overalls in a t-shirt with the chainsaw rolling in when walking into the house. He has no idea about what the heck he's talking about with, you know, knocking out walls in the house and rewiring.

And oh, yeah, I sculpt and I write poetry and I do all this other stuff. You know, he's throwing it on thick. Well, as he settles into his life at home with the kids, you know, he's trying to get groceries. He's trying to do laundry. He's trying to make dinner and lunch and all this other kind of stuff for the kids and get his wife off to work in the morning.

He's a total wreck. And then there's the next door neighbor that comes over that tries to seduce him and all this other stuff. And that's that's when I think he finally starts getting that reality of, oh, my gosh, how far off the rails am I here? So he starts to come around this whole time. He's got this old shirt that he's wearing that it's a big, heavy shirt and it's just he never washes it.

He's looking like a bum. He's just kind of lost all of his heart. And finally, this scene starts off with him and Kenny and one of his other sons. But Kenny is the one that's got the whoopee. And so it's like, Kenny, we're going to have to be men here. And he throws his shirt into the fireplace. And then Kenny is supposed to throw the whoopee, but Kenny doesn't want to give it up quite yet.

So that's where we pick up the scene. Listen, Ace. You and I have to have a man to man talk here about your whoopee. Your whoopee's looking bad, bud. Now, wait a minute. Now, listen to me. I understand that you little guys start out with your whoopee's and you think they're great. And they are.

They are terrific. But pretty soon, the whoopee isn't enough. You're out in the street trying to score an electric blanket or maybe a quilt.

And the next thing you know, you're strung out on bedspreads, Ken. That's serious. Now, give me the whoopee. No.

Kenny, come on, man. No. Okay. Give it to me for a couple of days.

If it doesn't work, you got the whoopee back. Please, you got a lot of guts. Can I have a moment to myself, please? Absolutely.

You got it. Well, Kenny's got the authenticity down. No. You know, he's very sharp very quick.

I don't think we could have any clip that shows authenticity better than Kenny in that one. Yeah. And then you've got – That's not doing so bad either. Well, and then just take whoopee out of that conversation and put in the word pose. And then, you know, define whichever pose you're doing today right now at this time, which one I'm doing.

I'm trying to do Mr. Radio Show. Who knows what pose is, right? So you take out that word whoopee and throw in whatever you want to throw in there. It's just leading us into something else.

It's leading us deeper down into another path because as soon as you tell one lie of what, you got to cover up with another lie. You make one pose, you got to cover it with another pose. And, well, I'm supposed to be this. Well, who is I to you and who is I what to the other person? And you got a whole other life you're living before you know it. Yeah. Well, you notice too in Kenny's response, he's not really ready to give up, quote, his pose at the time and neither are we a lot of times. And a lot of times it's a process. You may see those things in yourself that are posing or you may have a mourning for that, kind of like he was doing. He didn't want to give up. We'll be.

Well, we don't want to give up that thing about where we've always sought approval and wanted people to fall in with what, fall in love with what they see on the outside and not really know who we are. So kind of what I saw in it. Since how we've broken the scripture rule, I can go back to scripture, right? Absolutely. I was checking.

I don't want to get in trouble. Jim B was talking about Genesis 3. In Genesis 2, the last phrase in Genesis 2 is, and they were naked and unashamed. And several years ago, that scripture hit me pretty hard in kind of a dark place. It was sober. It was doing the church thing, doing all the right stuff, but was dying on the inside. And that scripture hit me about, and it's about authenticity. It's about being naked and unashamed.

And I don't mean running around naked. Don't nobody take that. Good. Yeah. Nobody will see that.

Exposed would work, but that actually is worse when you think about it. So just in one of those places, and what's funny is that my wife and I had an argument for church. It was funny one time. We get to church, and I put on my game face, and I go in, and I'm thinking, I've got this thing on. And somebody who really didn't know me really well comes up and goes, are you okay? And I just broke right there, and I said, no, but I will be in a minute. And I went and apologized right there.

You probably had more church then than ever. But that's the thing is to tear down those things, and it's a constant battle because if guys are the kind of truck you drive, what do you do for a living? And those kind of things, they make us almost in the pose. Yeah, for sure.

Home improvement. We all have times where we just slide into them because that's our nature, and that's what's easy. And we need people like the person that hardly knew you to call us out on that, and that's a big part of the brotherhood we have. And Jim has something to add, I can tell.

I don't know. As I think this through, I think of the Wolfian, which is basically a security blanket, which we all have. But we're always trying to find that spot where we can live without being in fear. And I'm telling you, the most authentic thing you can do is find a brother that you can be authentic with, and it is the most freeing thing in the world. You can talk about anything, your fears, your successes, the pose, and how that works. So come to the boot camp April 29th through May the 2nd, and you'll get to hear Jim talk about the pose.

And a lot more clips. Definitely. And go to masculinejourney.org to get more information. We got lots out there, blogs and information on the boot camp. So please come, and we'll see you at the boot camp. Thanks. This is the Truth Network.